


'Till Death Do Us Part

by orphan_account



Category: Twenty One Pilots
Genre: Alternate Universe - Zombie Apocalypse, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Amputation, Blood and Gore, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Minor Character Death, TOPFL October Challenge, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-27
Updated: 2018-10-27
Packaged: 2019-08-08 04:52:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,734
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16422749
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Tyler had Josh, and Josh had Tyler. Even when the world went to shit.





	'Till Death Do Us Part

**Author's Note:**

> Zombie apocalypse fic coming at you for Halloween times.

When the world went to shit, the only thing that gave Tyler the incentive to stay alive was Josh’s warm body next to him. As long as they had each other, everything would be alright.

When the dead started walking, it didn’t occur to anyone that something might have been wrong. Tyler was hosting a game night; he had ordered pizza, bought three packs of Mountain Dew, and over four different kinds of chips. Tyler’s brother Jay along with Josh’s brother Jordan joined them for a long night in of video games. It was supposed to be fun, a night to forget about work and school and adult responsibilities. And it had started off that way, but by a quarter to one in the morning, sirens started ringing, cars started piling up, and the fires started. Then came the screams, the news reports, the power outages.

Stuck in the middle of downtown, they barricaded the doors and tried to pretend everything was okay. Tyler had just stocked his pantry, so they had enough food for a few weeks. The brothers stuck together, worried about their families, hoping that one day they would call and hear a voice on the other end. Of course, that never happened. The world had ended.

And soon, all Tyler had was Josh.

Jay went first when they ran out of food. He opened the door to scavenge the other apartments and was met with the cold kiss of the undead’s lips. Tyler had cried. Screamed. Watched as Josh slammed the door and tried to stop the bleeding on Jay’s neck. They didn’t know that the bites turned humans into monsters.

Jordan was the one that paid for their ignorance.

The city wasn’t safe after they both lost their brothers. Together, they packed what essentials they could and fled from downtown. The weight of guns and knives on their person turned from necessary to familiar and comforting. The tears stopped because they did not help and the warm hearts of both boys turned rock solid. That’s how the world worked now. If you were soft, you perished.

Four years into the apocalypse, Josh and Tyler had met and lost many people, but they always had each other. In the darkest of nights, Josh’s lips against his neck gave him light. They traveled in a van stolen from a lot on the outskirts of Columbus, always moving, never daring to stay in one place for long. Trying that had gotten both of their brothers killed.

They drive on backroads since the highways, after all this time, are still blocked with hundreds of rusty cars. It’s silent without the hum of the radio to fill the car.

Josh, with his nose ring and freckles and long, curly brown hair, has his feet kicked up on the dashboard, cleaning his long Bowie knife with the hem of his shirt. They’re always covered in dirt and blood, so a little more doesn’t bother him.

Tyler glances over at him every so often just to make sure he’s okay. Most of the streetlights are dead and one of their headlights is out, so he really should be paying attention, but Josh’s hair sticks up in about a million different directions and has so much more volume then he can ever remember in the past. When the world ended, Josh’s hair had been yellow and the sides had been shaved. He ended up buzzing his entire head with the hope it would keep him safer, but neither one of them had even so much touched their hair in years. 

“Your hair’s a mess,” Tyler comments, smirking as looks back toward the road. Josh laughs wryly. 

“That’s rich coming from you.”

“What are you talking about?” He quirks up an eyebrow as Josh returns his knife to its holster on his belt. 

“C’mon, Ty. You look like a Collie if it had a mullet.”

“Fuck you, I don’t have a mullet.” Even though his hair was curling underneath his ears and along the nape of his neck. He kept it contained underneath a ballcap.

“You totally do.”

“You have an afro.”

Josh rolls his eyes. “Okay, well. Maybe next time we stop, I’ll pull out the knife. It won’t be anything super nice, but keeping it short is... smart.”

“Yeah,” Tyler agrees, keeping his eyes on the road. He swerves out of the way to avoid hitting a shuffler. “You look good either way, and that’s more than I can say about myself.”

“Whatever,” Josh replies, smiling. However, it quickly melts into a frown. “Remember how we used to talk about touring in a van just like this? Playing music. I kinda wish that we would have done that before everything went to shit.”

“There’s a lot of things I wish I would have done beforehand. Maybe...” He sighs. “Maybe Jay and Jordan would still be alive. Maybe our families would still be alive.”

“People would have died regardless, Ty. And Jay was not your fault. Neither was Jordan. We didn’t know.”

“Yeah. Maybe.”

Josh’s hand pats his knee as he shifts in his seat and leans forward. “Hey, there’s a gas station up there. Should we try and get some gas?”

Tyler glances down at the odometer, where the arrow is almost at empty. “Yeah, good idea.” He pulls the car off the road to the Mom and Pop gas station that looks perfectly preserved after four years of bullshit. It only has two gas pumps and feels too good to be true, but Tyler is hoping he’s wrong because Josh is optimistic.

“Damn, look at this place.” It has a log cabin aesthetic that would have made Tyler feel warm and fuzzy inside. He assumes that was kinda the intention of the design.

“Pays to know all the backwood areas of Ohio. You know, where all the hillbillies lived.”

“Most of Ohio was just rednecks, so not an impressive feat.” Josh grins as he jumps out of the car and moves to pull open the side door. “Here’s to hoping these pumps haven’t been siphoned yet.”

Tyler watches him pull out their gas stealing equipment as he hops out of the driver's seat and fashions his knife tightly in his hand. “I’ll do parole for shufflers.”

“Holler if one bites you.”

“Not funny!” Tyler yells over his shoulder as he makes his way around the establishment. He can hear movement in the woods, but those guys shouldn’t bother them too much. If they get close enough he’ll send the knife through their brainstem. 

The back door is locked, so Tyler makes his way back towards the front, gives Josh a longing glance, and pushes on the front door. A bell rings when he pushes in, alerting the poor attendant who had been working when shit hit the fan. To make matters worse, they hung themselves, and the shuffler hangs from the ceiling with outstretched arms.

It must have been soon after the apocalypse started because the store in its entirety looks just as untouched as everything on the outside. With a long sigh, Tyler makes his way over to what has once been a human being.

“I know it sucked, man,” he whispers, looking into its milky white eyes, “I thought about that too. But I had Josh.” The shuffler answers with a long groan. Tyler knows he can’t just leave this person alone like this, so he fixes the chair straight up to cut them down.

The bell rings again right as the walker crumbles to the floor, causing Josh to run over. Tyler stops him from unsheathing the knife, giving him a silent nod that says  _ I’ve got this  _ before driving his own knife through the shopkeeper’s head. He cleans it on his shirt before returning to Josh’s side. 

“He killed himself,” Tyler explains even though he’s sure Josh is smart enough to figure it out for himself. He just feels like he needs to say the words out loud so he knows it’s a possibility. It’s something that could happen to him, something he had thought about so many times before the end of the world and many, many times afterward. Josh made the burn go away, but that didn't mean it wasn’t there. It was always there, lingering, an itch at the back of his head that he could always feel. 

“Fuck,” Josh murmurs. His hand settles on the small of Tyler’s back.

“He deserved peace. Hopefully, he can get it now.” Tyler turns away from the body to look at the rest of the store. “There’s so much food in here.”

Josh clears his throat. “Gas, too. I filled the tank and we got another load.”

“We really struck gold here.” Tyler reaches out to pluck a Reese’s peanut butter cup from the counter. “God, I haven’t had a candy bar in—“

“Four years?” Josh grabs a bag of chips. “Let’s grab as much as we can hold and get the fuck out of here.”

“Would be nice if we could stay, though. Eat as much as we can, light some candles, pack tomorrow...” Tyler trails off and cocks an eyebrow. “I mean, if this place looks as untouched as we think, then it could be good for us-- no, good for our moral!”

Josh nods his head slowly as he continues to shove candy bars and assorted snacks into his backpack. “Yeah, I could spend some time off the road. I can pull the van around back and get our sleeping bags out.”

“Cool. There are some walkers out there near the woods, so be careful. I’m gonna make sure all the windows and doors are secured.”

He smiles. “Sure thing.”

 

* * *

Twenty minutes later, after all the windows and doors are blocked off and Josh has laid down their sleeping bags and lit some candles, they sit close together dining on junk food. Josh has managed to find some Twinkies that he eats like a wild animal and Tyler doesn’t have the heart to tell him how gross that is.

“This is better than sex,” Josh moans through a mouthful of prepackaged food, “Fucking  _ thanks _ that these things are stuffed with so much long lasting shit.” He toes one Tyler’s way and tilts his head in a silent offer, but Tyler politely declines.

“The chocolate is enough for me.”

“I am so happy you were a redneck.”

Tyler scoffs. “I was  _ not _ a redneck, okay? I just... knew a lot of rednecks.”

“Wouldn’t that make you a redneck by default?”

“Wouldn’t that make  _ you _ a redneck by default?”

Josh thinks about it as he swallows his Twinkie, his eyes never leaving the comfort of Tyler’s face. “Fair enough.”

They use the lull in their conversation to settle down onto their backs and cuddle; Tyler lays his head on Josh’s chest right over his sternum and listens to his heartbeat. The thing about Tyler was that he often had something on his mind and sometimes that something came out of his mouth before he could process what exactly he had said. For instance, as he’s laying here, surrounded by candlelight and the sound of muffled moans, Tyler finds himself thinking about the future. Thinking about the future is what prompts him to say, “I don’t think it’s always gonna be like this” to Josh, who presses his lips together in thought.

“You mean the dead always walking around and us having to steal, lie, cheat, and kill to survive?” He replies darkly. Tyler huffs.

“I mean, when you put it that way.”

“Sorry.”

“No, it’s okay. I just mean, like, one day, all the walkers are gonna be dead, right? Or, dead again. Communities can be built up and perfected. Maybe we could even get technology working again, or electricity. We could rebuild the world’s population. It... it’s a rebirth.”

“Like the big bang, but not on quite as large of a scale.”

“Exactly.” Tyler presses his fingers against Josh’s nipple through his t-shirt and smirks a little bit when Josh wriggles around underneath him. “Damn dude, chill out.”

Josh blows a raspberry, causing Tyler to chuckle. “Oh, whatever. It’s because I’m cold, not because of you.”

“You dick!”

“Fine,” Josh whines, smiling, “it is because of you. Always.”

“Good.” His hand slides down to thumb at the exposed skin around Josh’s waist. “I don’t know what I’d do without you. These past four years have only been manageable because of you.”

“I know what you’d do without me. You’d keep on living until you saw the day where you were safe behind walls.”

“Is that what you’d do if I died?” He pushes Josh’s shirt up to expose more skin and trails his fingers back and forth across his stomach. “Go on.”

“It’s what we have to do. What we have been doing. You know what happens if we sit and mourn.”

“I’d mourn a little,” Tyler mumbles.

“I’d mourn a lot if you died, asshole.” Josh shoves him playfully. “I’m not saying we wouldn’t have time to mourn. You know how things work around here.”

“Just because I know how things work doesn’t mean I want to sit here and talk about it. It’s not like I wanted everyone I know to die. It’s not like I wanted to be on the run from monsters, unable to sleep comfortably, always worried about the people closest to me.” Tyler has tears in his eyes and tries to wipe them away with the back of his hand because they really can’t afford for him to be weak, but sometimes everything becomes too much for him. For all he knows, his entire family is dead. “You’re all I have left, Josh.”

“Hey.” Josh sits up to reach for Tyler’s hands and pulls the misty-eyed boy into his lap so he can cup his cheek. “You aren’t going to lose me, Ty. We’re being careful. We’re prepared, okay? Everything will be okay. I promise.”

Tyler starts to chuckle as Josh wipes away the tears from underneath his eyes. “I’m sorry to be a big baby about all of this. Sometimes I just... start thinking about all we’ve lost and get really emotional about it.”

“You aren’t weak because you get sad. We both got sad before shit hit the fan and just because the dead started walking around doesn’t mean we still can’t get sad. It’s okay.” Josh flashes a sympathetic smile and leans in to press a kiss to the corner of Tyler’s mouth. When their relationship really started, neither one knows. They had been very close for a long time, so hand-holding and sleeping in the same bed together wasn’t weird. It wasn’t weird when they started kissing and having sex, either, even if they weren’t sure when that exactly happened.

Tyler uses a finger to tilt Josh’s chin up just enough to kiss him properly, deepening the kiss when Josh’s natural musk fills his nostrils. Not bathing for days and days only strengthened their pheromones and Tyler absolutely adored the way Josh smelled, whether he was covered in grime and blood or not.

“I love you,” he whispers as Josh’s lips press against his jaw. Tyler tilts his head up so Josh can kiss his neck and Adam’s Apple.

“I love you more,” Josh replies as he gently slides Tyler away from his legs and onto his sleeping bag. “Lay on your back. I wanna make you feel safe.”

“Feel good,” Tyler corrects with a smirk. Josh rolls his eyes, but he’s smiling too as he tugs Tyler’s joggers off and sets them to the side. He moves in between Tyler’s legs to passionately kiss him, parting his lips so Tyler’s tongue can comfortably make its way inside.

“Asshat,” mutters Josh, still smiling. He helps Tyler pull off his tee, tossing it recklessly on top of his joggers. Josh’s eyes scan the dimensions of Tyler’s chest, trying to figure out the best place to kiss as he dips his lips into the deep end of the swimming pool. Tyler’s eyelids flutter as Josh kisses his collarbone, his hands massaging Tyler’s hips. Tyler sinks his hands into Josh’s unruly hair and tugs lightly, testing the waters. He’s in love with the smell of Josh’s everything and it’s all he can think about as Josh makes his way down his chest. 

A kiss to each of his nipples respectfully and to his sternum, Josh pauses to flash a charming smile before his lips slide to Tyler’s left nipple and latch tightly. As he sucks, Tyler raises his hips off the sleeping bag and gasps out loud.

“Fuck, Josh.”

His hooded eyes glance upwards, that stupid smile still on his face. Josh sucks until Tyler’s raw before moving down to kiss his belly button and his pubic bone. A few loose strands of curly pubic hair poke out from his boxers that Josh kisses to before he begins to mouth over the clothed head of Tyler’s cock. Tyler can feel himself leaking, can see how strained his dick is against its cotton prison, but Josh is enjoying being a tease and Tyler would be lying if he said he wasn't enjoying it.

Josh’s fingers curl around his thighs, his nails pushing into soft skin. Tyler bucks his hips again, raising his groin toward Josh’s face eagerly. As happy as Tyler was being with Josh, he also loved the sex stuff. If they could get away with doing that all the time, he’d be on cloud nine.

“Okay, you want me to...” Josh gestures with his fingers in a circular motion to which Tyler rapidly nods. He lifts his hips off the ground to contribute his efforts in helping Josh remove his boxers, allowing his hardened cock room to breath. Immediately his hand reaches for his leaking dick as a reflex and Josh is quick to swat it away. 

“My job,” he whispers huskily, moving to press his lips against the head of Tyler cock. A low groan leaves his lips as Josh’s tongue presses flat to lick all the way down to the base. Tyler’s shaking hands, desperate to grab onto something, return to tug on the long strands of Josh’s greasy hair. He’s trying his hardest to be quiet because there are dead people roaming around outside, but it’s a little hard when Josh’s mouth is literally making magic happen down there.

“Want to feel your skin,” Tyler begs, his eyes closed, “wanna see you naked.”

“Yeah, okay,” agrees Josh, pausing to take his clothes off. Tyler opens his eyes right as Josh manages to get his underwear off, staring at the hardened pink head of his cock. His stomach turns as Josh lowers himself in Tyler’s lap, his hands fastening around Tyler’s bony hips as their dicks are smooshed together. They moan together as Josh begins to grind down against Tyler with simultaneously catching him for another deep and passionate kiss. Surrounded by candlelight, this is as romantic as it’s gonna get in the shit world they live in now, but they are all each other can focus on. Tension continues building, causing both of them to rut harder; Josh even spits on his hand and wraps it around the girth of their cocks to speed up the process. Tyler comes first, his teeth sinking into Josh’s neck to mark him up as heavy breaths come from his nose. Josh doesn’t stop rubbing until he’s come himself and has finished riding them through their orgasm.

Before Tyler can say anything, there’s a knock at the window. Mortified, Josh turns around to see a guy standing outside, his eyes wide and his cheeks flushed, as he awkwardly waves.

“Shit!” Tyler scrambles for his underwear as Josh rolls off of him and grabs the first thing he can find to cover up his junk. “How long has that guy been there?”

“Fucking creep,” Josh mutters back as he shoves his legs back through his boxers and stands up to approach the door.

“Wait!” Tyler tosses him a pocket knife to which Josh offers his gratitude and turns back toward the door. They can barely make out the muffled plea to ‘let him in’ from the guy outside.

 

* * *

“So, you guys were really going at it in here,” is the first thing the stranger says when Josh lets him in. He locks the door back up with a scowl before returning to pull the rest of his clothes back on. Tyler turns one of the sleeping bags over to hide the come stains before reaching for his tee. “I mean, don’t get me wrong, it was hot. I haven’t watched porn since this fucking thing started so thanks for reminding me what it’s like to have a boner.”

“You’re disgusting,” Josh spits out, glaring at him. Tyler shrugs his shoulders and pats Josh’s knee.

“Not like he was expecting us to be fucking when he walked up to a gas station.”

The stranger nods. “That’s exactly what I was  _ not _ expecting to find. Just saw the light and figured there were people inside. Sorry to kill the mood.”

“You’re the one standing in our semen, so.” Josh smirks, shrugs his shoulders, “not my problem.”

Tyler rolls his eyes. “What’s your name, dude?”

“Oh, right. I’m Mark.” He bends down to offer a hand that Tyler graciously accepts.

“Tyler and Josh. We’re together.”

“I would hope so, with the way you were going on it. Jesus, I can’t get that image of your di--”

“Okay, seriously? Stop.” Josh is still pissed off, so Tyler reaches for his hand. Mark backs off and clears his throat.

“Sorry, sorry. Thanks for letting me in, though. It gets scary out there at night. Never know when a roamer might sneak up on you.”

“Have you been out here on your own?”

Mark nods. “Yeah, I uhm, lost my group a while ago. We got separated and I... really don’t know if any of them are still alive.” He forces a sad smile. “It’s alright.”

“You can sleep here tonight,” Tyler offers. “This place is pretty much untouched, so help yourself.”

“Shit.” Mark stands up to check out the selection of remaining candy bars and picks up a Kit-Kat bar. “God, I haven’t had chocolate in forever.”

Josh repeats him mockingly under his breath, still pouting that Mark caught them having sex. He always had been a private person, so Tyler understands his frustration. It’s not like he wanted everyone to see his dick, either. Making love was for them and them alone (although Tyler wouldn’t be opposed to someone watching them. If they could go back to how things were, he would have told everyone he was dating Josh.)

Mark continues stuffing his bag with snacks until it’s full and then sits down next to the other two half-naked men. “Thanks again, guys. There aren’t a lot of nice people out there these days.”

“Yeah, of course,” Tyler replies, reaching out for Josh’s hand. Josh is still staring angrily at Mark, but Tyler knows he’ll get over it eventually. Josh couldn’t stay mad for long. “Josh and I were probably just gonna go to bed.”

Mark snorts. “After you were done fucking?”

Tyler pulls back on Josh, feeling him already aiming for Mark’s jugular. He manages to hold him back as Josh growls out a furious “no.”

“Okay, I’m done with the jokes. Sorry.” Mark scoots back to lean against one of the shelves and raises his hands in defense. “Really. Sorry.”

“I’m gonna go smoke.” Josh stands up, shrugging Tyler off of him in the process to pull a half carton of cigarettes out of his jacket pocket. He disappears into the restroom and Tyler sighs.

It takes him a few minutes to work up the courage to say something, even though he has plenty to say. Mark just looks like the kind of person who seems genuinely nice and Tyler doesn’t want to upset him.

In fact, almost seven minutes have gone by before Tyler feels like he can explain. “Josh is a pretty private person. Doesn’t like jokes about him and sex. So if you could just knock it off, that’d be really fucking great.”

Mark clears his throat. “Sorry. Poorly timed jokes are my coping mechanism.”

“Okay, but we’re the ones who let you in, so maybe pissing off strangers you just met isn’t exactly the best idea, now is it?”

He sighs. “Yeah. Okay. Sorry. I won’t bother you guys. Thanks for the food, and letting me stay the night. I’ll be on my way tomorrow.”

“Okay.” Tyler takes a deep breath and looks down at his grime-covered hands. He should probably go see what Josh is up to in the bathroom because letting him boil wasn’t going to do any good for any member of the party currently in the gas station.

“I’m gonna go check on Josh.” Tyler flashes a pity smile before shuffling to the back of the gas station to politely knock on the single-stall bathroom door. Josh yanks it open, a puff of smoke blowing right into Tyler’s face. He coughs a couple of times before pushing past his boyfriend. Josh slams the door shut and locks it tightly.

The whole bathroom reeks of weed. Tyler doesn’t even want to ask where Josh managed to get marijuana, but he’s nosy and needs to know.

Josh’s eyes are already red and bloodshot. “I’m feeling better.”

“Where the hell did you get weed from?”

“Around.” He stumbles against the door like one of the undead as he moves to take another hit of his poorly rolled joint. “Yeah... around.”

“Dude, it’s been like ten minutes.”

He laughs. “If I’m gonna survive a night with that asshole, I gotta get high.”

“J.” Tyler steps forward to take the joint pinched in between his thumb and forefinger and sets it down on the sink. “You know this stuff impedes your judgment. What if we need to run? Fight? Drive?”

“I can still do all of those things. Just needed something to take the edge off.”

“Right, right.” Tyler shakes his head as he stares at the hazy, orange glow of the joint and the stream of smoke trailing into the ceiling. “And what if Mark hadn’t shown up tonight? What would have happened then?”

Josh shrugs. When he stumbles again, Tyler is there to steady him and holds him tightly between his shaking hands. “I dunno. I was saving it. Now’s as good of a time as any, right?”

“No, it’s not. Because we aren’t alone. And something could happen out there at any second that could result in one of us getting killed and if you died--” Tyler chokes up, causing Josh to frown. He pulls Tyler in for a hug and kisses his neck.

“I’m sorry. I should have said something.”

“I thought you were smoking a cigarette. You grabbed the box.”

“It had my weed in it,” he admits quietly. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you.”

Tyler blinks back tears. He knows he can’t cry. He knows the world doesn’t have room for weakness, even though he’s been displaying a lot of it tonight. “We’ve lost so much. I can’t... I can’t lose you too.”

“You won’t lose me. I promise. That’s not going to happen.”

“You can’t be sure.”

“But I am,” Josh fights, his lips still pressed up against Tyler’s neck. He grinds against him, making Tyler’s cock twitch in his sweatpants. Josh’s teeth sink into the sensitive skin to suck a hickey into his neck. “You will never lose me. Never, ever, ever.”

“Promise?”

He stands up straight to offer Tyler his calloused pinkie. “Pinkie promise.”

 

* * *

Mark hasn’t moved when they come back. He can probably smell the weed, since Tyler may have taken a few hits himself, but says nothing as they sit down practically on top of each other.

“I wish I knew what time it was,” Josh mutters under his breath as Tyler sucks on his neck. Mark watches uncomfortably. He knows the reason he’s having to put up with their over-the-top acting because of his loud mouth.

“Could always get a watch.”

“Yeah, but how do we know if the time is right or not?”

“Make a guess?” He suggests.

“Whatever. Hey, we’re going to bed. Can you take first watch?”

“Sure.” Mark coughs. “I’m sorry for all the jokes I made.”

“It’s okay. I overreacted.” Josh bursts into giggles when Tyler slips a hand underneath his shirt to pinch his nipples. “Tyler, stop.”

“It must be nice to have someone.”

“It is,” Tyler pulls away from Josh’s neck long enough to speak before returning to the bruise he’s currently working on. Mark smiles.

“I wouldn’t want to be a burden, joining you guys, but it would be nice to not be on my own anymore. I could offer a lot to the group.”

“Dude, we might have to have this conversation in the morning when I’m not high.”

Mark clasps his hands together before moving a hand to rest on the butt of his gun. “Right.”

“We’ll keep the porn to a minimum,” Tyler teases as he pushes Josh onto his back and straddles him. Mark chuckles softly as he stands up and moves to the front door.

 

* * *

They awake to the sound of a gunshot.

Tyler protectively throws his arms over Josh’s body as glass shatters, reaching for Josh’s knife he kept strapped to the side of his leg.

“Tyler,” Josh whisper-yells as Tyler pushes off the sleeping bag to approach the front of the store. Mark stands, his arm coddled to his chest, oozing blood as walkers shuffle toward the broken storefront.

“What happened?”

“It b-bit me,” Mark cries, tears streaming down his face. Tyler’s eyes widen.

“I’m sorry,” he tells Mark, already backing away. Mark shakes his head.

“You can’t leave me!”

“Josh, we have to go. Now.”

Josh is already frantically shoving things in their bags, abandoning their sleeping bag on the floor as he raises his gun toward the shufflers stepping over the threshold of the store. “The van is in the back.”

“Please!” Mark screams, chasing after them. “We can cut my arm off, anything--”

“I’m so sorry.” Tyler is crying again. After four years, he shouldn’t be crying, but he is. Because he knows abandoning Mark here is such a shitty thing to do, yet all he can focus on is saving himself and saving Josh. That’s all he’s been able to focus on. No matter who they met, in the end, it would only be him and Josh.

“C’mon!” Josh’s arm yanks around Tyler’s shoulders like a shepherd's hook, steering him towards the back door. Tyler already has the keys out of his pocket, trying to keep his hands steady enough to not drop them. Behind come Mark’s screams and the sound of ripping flesh.

That could have been them. That could have been them if Mark hadn’t been there, if Mark--

“Tyler!”

Josh snaps him out of his guilty haze to pull the keys out of his hands. He shoots a few more walkers before opening the passenger side door. “Get in. I’m driving.”

“M-Mark--”

“Is gone. Get in, now.”

Tyler obeys. As soon as he’s in, Josh slides across into the driver’s side and floors the car with everything its got. They do not speak until they are away from danger, away from Mark’s corpse, away from the gas station that had provided them one night of freedom.

There are tears rolling down his face in waves. Tyler keeps silent, his teeth clamped tightly around his tongue.

“It’s my fault.” He can’t keep it together anymore. His hands cling to the extra fabric of his sleeves, tugging harshly like it will help him keep his shit together. “I just left him. We just left him there to die.”

“He got bit. There’s nothing we could have done for him.”

“But what if,” he sniffs, “what if that was one of us?”

Josh sighs. “We barely knew him.”

“But he was a person. Someone we could have been friends with in different circumstances.”

“Exactly. Different circumstances, Ty. In this world, we can’t afford to think about what could have happened. You know that.  _ We _ know that.”

“But I don’t want to live like this!” He finds himself screaming at Josh, all the emotions he had stored over the past four years finally oozing out of him like hot magma from the Earth’s crust. “I don’t want to pretend like everything is okay all the time. I want to be able to talk about things like how we used to. I want to be able to express my feelings and mourn over the death of a fucking stranger.”

“Then mourn, Tyler. I’m not telling you not to mourn. I’m telling you--”

“I fucking know what you’re telling me.” He can feel the glint of tears brimming over his eyelids all over again. “I fucking know, Josh. I fucking know.”

Josh doesn’t say anything, and their conversation ends there.

 

* * *

They drive in silence for a few, long hours. Tyler looks out the window, his eyes still red from all the crying he had done. He doesn’t want Josh to see, even though he knows Josh knows. Tyler just wants to pretend he was being strong like he had in the past.

Maybe strength worked in phases. In the beginning, he was weak. Slowly, he got stronger and stronger and stronger, until there was nowhere to go but down. Josh was still climbing, but Tyler had reached the cliff’s edge.

Josh pulls over at an old rest stop. The building has a lot of wear and tear throughout the years without any human beings around to care for it, but Tyler decides he’s staying put in the van anyways. They could always sleep in the backseat.

He’s staring at a lone walker pacing the parking lot as Josh kills the engine and looks over at him. “Ty.”

“Yeah.” Tyler pivots in his seat to look at Josh, who reaches out to kiss his lips. Tyler lets him because it makes him feel better. Josh’s firm hands settle down on his thighs as he rests his lips comfortably on the corner of Tyler’s mouth.

“I’m sorry for freaking out. I shouldn’t... I shouldn’t have done that. I shouldn’t have yelled at you.”

Tyler sits back and smiles apologetically. “It wasn’t just you. I freaked out too. I know we’re supposed to be strong. But sometimes--”

“It’s hard.” Josh nods. “I know. And we shouldn’t be hard on each other when we succumb to moments of weakness.”

“Sometimes it feels like it would be easier to end it all, y’know? Especially when people die. It’s just a reminder.”

The hand on his thigh sneaks up for his hand. Josh squeezes it in support. “We have to keep going. Like you said: it won’t always be like this. We have to push through for the people we lost. For our brothers, our sisters, our parents.”

“But what if one of us...” Fuck. Tyler is tearing up again. People had always told him he cried far too much for a boy when he was growing up. You think the apocalypse would have changed that, or something. But nope, Tyler was still here, almost thirty years old, crying over the mere thought of death. He’s glad Josh knows enough to not make him continue. 

“We were scared of death before the dead started walking, babe. It’s okay to still be scared. As long as we keep moving forward.”

Tyler sniffs a few times before wiping the wetness out of his eyes with the sleeve of his coat. He raises their tangled hands to kiss Josh’s knuckles and smiles. “I don’t know what I’d do without you.”

“I don’t know what I’d do without you,” Josh says back.

They spend the rest of the daylight giving each other poorly done haircuts with Josh’s knife. Tyler’s hair isn’t buzzed like he would have wanted it, but it’s short enough to make him feel safe-- and the same goes for Josh. Afterward, they do a perimeter sweep, killing the few shufflers hanging around the rest stop before climbing back into the van to eat what they managed to escape with from the gas station. Josh breaks a Hershey bar in half and gives Tyler one piece. While he plays with his piece in his hands, Josh begins nibbling on it right away.

“Do you think Mark hates us?”

Josh swallows, his eyes crinkling. “I don’t think Mark can form coherent feelings or thoughts like that anymore.”

“No, I mean... with his last breaths. Do you think he hates us for abandoning him?”

“He would have died anyway.”

“But we... we didn’t do anything. Not even kill him out of pity so he wouldn’t turn into one of those monsters. Now he’s destined to live the rest of his undead life out as a ripped apart walker.”

He sighs, setting his remaining piece of chocolate back in the wrapper to scoot closer to his worrying boyfriend. “We panicked. There’s nothing we can do now. If you keep thinking about it, it’s only going to get worse.”

“You’re right, you’re right.” Tyler pauses to take a bite of chocolate and lick his lips. Josh is still watching him closely, making sure he’s okay. “I’ll be okay, really. It’s not like it’s the first time this has happened.”

“Right,” Josh whispers. They finish their chocolate together, letting silence fill the van as the sun sets outside. A few distant moans can be heard from outside, but they aren’t worried. The van will protect them tonight, and in the morning, they can keep moving.

They have sex again that night. Josh promises Tyler a distraction, and a distraction he gives, riding Tyler’s dick with his legs wrapped around his boyfriend’s waist. They moan softly, into the slick skin of each other’s shoulders and necks, trying to keep their come contained in one spot. Tyler feels safe, and it’s all Josh needs.

 

* * *

The reach the Indiana border the next morning. Tyler is surprised they haven’t left Ohio after all this time, but heading west seems like a good idea. The farther they went, the fewer shufflers would be around throughout the lonely landscape. The only problem with that was accessing the highways. They were still pretty backed up, and once outside of Ohio, Tyler no longer had any knowledge of the backroads.

“We drive until we have to stop,” Josh offers, “it’s not like we have a place to be or a time to be there.”

He was right, and so they drove and drove and drove until it was time to rest. They filled up their water bottles in a nearby creek, sloppily boiling the water beforehand (Josh had learned that in scouts and never stopped talking about the importance of clean water) and raided houses in crumbling neighborhoods. If there were shufflers roaming about, they killed them. If there were humans-- groups-- they avoided them. 

It was like it was always supposed to be. Josh and Tyler; Tyler and Josh.

A week after Mark’s death, Tyler is feeling okay now. They had made it four years and could make it four more. Maybe then, things will be different. 

Either way, they had each other, and together they were safe.

In the world today, nothing good lasted forever. They knew that. They prepared for it. But you couldn’t prepare for everything, and they knew that too.

It’s Tyler’s fault. He’s the one that wanted to stay. And it wasn’t like they  _ knew _ a herd was just around the corner. If they had known that, they wouldn’t have stayed. Josh wanted to keep driving. In Indiana, nothing was familiar. Tyler didn’t know the streets or the neighborhoods or the best places to get a slice of pizza. He didn’t recognize the faces of the walkers he killed or the rusted cars that were overrun with weeds.

Yet, he had let his guard down. Because he felt safe in this neighborhood. There was nothing around and it was so quiet, Tyler swore he could hear a pin drop.

So they had stayed. They had stayed, curled up on a strangers sofa to make love. Tyler’s shirt ended up across the living room, his pants halfway underneath the couch pegs, his boxers caught in the withering leaves of a dying plant. Josh’s tongue was everywhere, trailing down the length of his spine, his hands spreading Tyler’s cheeks wide enough to lick his entrance and eat him out. Tyler’s moans spilled into the rough fabric of the sofa cushions as Josh’s mouth worked his entrance, his testicles, his leaking cock.

And, lost in a moment of weakness, the herd advanced.

Josh wasn’t completely naked, his groin still hidden behind somewhat soiled boxers when the back door cracked off its hinges. They hadn’t checked. They hadn’t fucking checked.

In letting their guard down with each other, Tyler had plotted his demise down to his last ticking second on the clock’s little hand.

“What was that?” Tyler whispers, his eyes wide as he pushes Josh off of him. He rushes across the room for his underwear as Josh rolls across the carpet for their weapons.

His answer comes in the form of shuffling and moans. Josh peeks outside through the front room curtains and swivels around with wide eyes.

“Oh my God.”

“What?” Tyler joins him, reaching a shaking hand for Josh’s shoulder. He ignores his erection, knowing it’ll pass if the danger doesn’t leave soon. Josh stops him from looking.

“There are hundreds out there. We need to lay low until they pass.”

“How long will that take?” Tyler’s eyes are wide now too. Josh shakes his head, already using his fight-or-flight instinct to his advantage. He speaks as he tiptoes to the kitchen.

“Get to the master bedroom, now.”

“What about you?” Tyler brandishes his gun, clicking the safety off to follow behind Josh. “What about the sound?”

“Tyler--” Josh never gets to finish, because shufflers are already pouring it through the broken back door. He grunts heavily as one claws at him, using his bowie knife to stab it right in the top of its skull. Tyler uses the butt of his gun to stun one long enough to get far enough away. His knife is back in the living room with the rest of their clothes and food.

They were dumb, and it was all Tyler’s fault.

“Don’t shoot! If you shoot, it’ll alert the others. Don’t shoot!” Josh yells over the stabbing of his knife and the groans of the undead pouring into the kitchen. 

“I have nothing else!” A shuffler grabs his arm as another one trips over Tyler’s foot. Josh kills a few more, yanking open kitchen drawers for a weapon Tyler could use. He decides on a butter knife and tosses it Tyler’s way for the younger boy to get the walkers off of him.

Tyler tries to retreat, but he’s backed into a corner. All the violence is alerting more and more of the herd. They’re outnumbered.

“Josh!” Tears fill his eyes. Josh gives him a look that says “I know, keep fighting” so Tyler slashes and pushes. In the end, it’s not enough.

Despite four years of rotting, the walker’s teeth still hurt when they sink into Tyler’s wrist. It still hurts enough for him to scream and cry out when blood falls to the tiled floor below. 

Josh is screaming too, screaming as he pushes through the crowd of the undead to pull Tyler into his arms. He starts shooting, no longer caring about alerting the other walkers. The only thing Josh cares about is Tyler.

The door to the master bedroom is slammed shut and locked. Tyler burrows into a corner while Josh uses bookshelves and dressers to barricade the door. When he sees what happened, dread fills his face.

“You gotta kill me,” Tyler sobs over and over again, his bitten arm curled into his chest. Josh drops to his knees, his shoulders sinking in defeat. “You gotta kill me, you gotta kill me, you gotta kill me.”

“Shut up!” Josh growls at him. His bare chest and arms are sprayed in blood and bits of brain matter from all the shooting. Outside, fingernails scratch at the bedroom door. “I’m not going to kill you. Tyler, I can’t fucking do that.”

“You have to. We promised.” If either one got bit, they had to move on. It was the only thing they could do.

“No.” Josh shakes his head and allows his right hand to curl tightly around his sharp knife. “No, I’m cutting your hand off.”

“Josh--”

“SHUT UP!” Josh screams at him, yanking Tyler’s arm away from his chest. Tyler fights Josh’s toned arms as his boyfriend straddles him and gets him pinned down. Josh always had been stronger. Normally, that would have been okay, but now that he was about to lose his hand, Tyler was freaking out. “If I cut it off, you live. You can live.”

“I can’t--”

“You fucking  _ have to, _ understand me?” Josh pops off of him to yank the bedsheets off. Tyler watches him, his heart beating a mile a minute, his humanity draining away with every passing second. Quickly he knots the sheet as tightly as possible at Tyler’s elbow before adjusting himself back over Tyler’s body.

“Be quiet. I know it’s going to be hard, but you have to be quiet.”

Tyler is unable to feel anything. The world is blurred through all his tears and the pounding of his gasps in his chest.

“On three. One, two...” The knife comes down above the bite wound. Tyler howls, his entire body arching toward the ceiling. Josh’s weight helps, but it’s not enough to stop his body from jerking. In fact, the pain is so much that Tyler finds himself slipping away.

“Don’t die on me, Tyler,” Josh shouts, tears streaming down his face. “I love you.  _ Please  _ don’t fucking  _ die on me.” _

Two more hacks and Tyler is unconscious, Josh is covered in his blood.

Outside, the undead long for the taste of human flesh as they scratch at the door with their claw-like nails.

Today, they stay together, in sickness and health, through life, through death.

**Author's Note:**

> Pastelxmess on Tumblr :-)


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